Candidate gene based association mapping in Fusarium culmorum for field quantitative pathogenicity and mycotoxin production in wheat

BACKGROUND: Quantitative traits are common in nature, but quantitative pathogenicity has received only little attention in phytopathology. In this study, we used 100 Fusarium culmorum isolates collected from natural field environments to assess their variation for two quantitative traits, aggressiveness and deoxynivalenol (DON) production on wheat plants grown in four different field environments (location-year combinations). Seventeen Fusarium graminearum pathogenicity candidate genes were assessed for their effect on the aggressiveness and DON production of F. culmorum under field conditions. RESULTS: For both traits, genotypic variance among isolates was high and significant while the isolate-by-environment interaction was also significant, amounting to approximately half of the genotypic variance. Among the studied candidate genes, the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) HOG1 was found to be significantly associated with aggressiveness and deoxynivalenol (DON) production, explaining 10.29 and 6.05% of the genotypic variance, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of a protein kinase regulator explaining differences in field aggressiveness and mycotoxin production among individuals from natural populations of a plant pathogen. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12863-017-0511-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.